


you're alive, i'm alive

by altilis



Series: careful, ren. [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:10:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5502317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altilis/pseuds/altilis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-TFA. Snoke never tells Hux how or where to find Kylo Ren; neither does he say when to return him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're alive, i'm alive

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone and their mom has written or drawn what happens after the movie with these two. Figures I'll contribute my 2c.

Hux takes one of Kylo's escort ships because it's the fastest one still in the hangar and it's always manned with a pilot and a handful of soldiers. "Leave now!" he barks, and the pilots scramble. Within a few seconds - these engines are always warm - the ship jerks up, the ramp doors closing as the crumbling base disappears behind them.

"Fly to the oscillator station," he says to the pilots, stepping into the cockpit to see what they're up against: the planet is cracking, trees disappearing into volcanic fissures. Hux uses a trick he's seen Kylo use: he focuses on his anger to push aside the fear.

One of the pilots looks over his shoulder. "Sir, we don't have the time --"

" _Now_ ," he demands, "And extend the sensor arrays; we're searching for Kylo Ren."

"Sir," the other pilot this time, "with these magnetic fields, we can't--"

"Find him!" Hux know he's screaming. It won't make them work faster, but it will keep them from running away. "And open the ramp doors!"

Hux stands at the edge of the ramp as it opens, the wind howling through the shuttle, and he scans the terrain as he holds the bulkhead to steady himself. They'll never be able to find him by sight, not in this taiga of black woods and black hills. His fist clenches and he grits his teeth, hating this helplessness, this futility, where was he, where are you, Kylo?

" _Here_ ," Hux shouts, and he doesn't know why, but his voice is hoarse and his hand is shaking, and he shouts it again as the shuttle slows to his order. "Land here! Now!"

They’re never going to find him, Hux thinks, just as a ridge rises into his view and he spies a form that is neither rock nor fallen trees, slowly sitting up in the snow. “There,” and he’s screaming again, pointing at the ridge behind the shuttle. “Get him!” 

The shuttle jerks back to meet the ridge, the soldiers run out alogn the ramp to grab Kylo before the ridge disintegrates into the fissure. They lose one soldier. Hux doesn’t care. 

“Over on the bench, and careful not to injure him further!” Hux says as Kylo twists and tries to pull back from the soldiers moving him, already biting back his own screams until they place him on the long bench and back away to the other end of the transport. His chest rises and falls with quick, labored breathing, and blood already starts to drip from the crease under his belt to the floor.

Hux ignores everything: the other soldiers, the pilots, propriety. He kneels next to the bench and reaches out to cup Kylo’s face, his thumb brushing a bloody cauterized wound that makes Kylo hiss and squeeze his eyes shut. He tries to jerk away, but Hux curls his gloved fingers in Kylo’s damp hair and refuses to let go. “Ren, where are you injured? Tell me!” It’s an order, one he knows Kylo hates.

“Everywhere,” Kylo croaks, his own voice broken and hoarse, one hand coming up to try to wrench away Hux’s hand by the wrist but it ends up clinging there at his arm, his fingers curling in the wool of Hux’s greatcoat. 

“Hyperbole will do you no good here, you bloody bastard,” Hux says, softer but still sharp. He needs to know more. “Where? Your face, for one. Where else, Ren?”

Kylo sucks in a breath, and he’s staring at the ceiling as if he’s trying to focus, then he closes his eyes, biting his lip for a moment as the shuttle shudders around them. “Shoulders.” Hux can see that now - the fabric singed, the same tacky burn. “Thigh…”

“And your hip?” The blood is probably still dripping, if Hux could turn his eyes away from Kylo’s face and look.

Kylo grits his teeth for a moment, shifting, but going nowhere. “Wookie bowcaster. It’ll heal.”

“Of course it’ll heal,” Hux says with a short bark of laughter. He studies Kylo’s face closer now as the man seems to relax, the pain slowly easing out of his face, the smoothness broken by the long, burnt slice from his forehead across his cheek and down against his neck. “You’re to go to Snoke; do you think I’ll deliver you like this, half-broken? Are you mad?”

Kylo stirs, his eyes barely opening, and he tries to sit up. “I have to completely my training--”

“No.” Hux presses down on Kylo’s right shoulder, and Kylo lies back with a strained groan, grip so tight on the Hux’s sleeve. “No. Not now. We’re going to the Finalizer, and you’ll rest until I’ve decided you’re fit to leave my care, do you understand?”

Kylo makes a sound at the back of his throat, but it’s not an outright no, and Hux lets out a breath as he lets go of Kylo’s shoulder. He stands and takes off his gloves, now also dirty and bloodied, and drops them to the floor before stepping over to the cockpit, asking for communication to the Finalizer’s medical team.

\--

He wakes up, startled, and destroys the room by accident: there are singes of lightning around the console and the screens are crushed. When he stumbles out of the wreckage into the medical hall, they give him pause for a moment before two medical officers escort him to another room, and Kylo feels so drained he’s unable to do anything but follow.

Hux visits him in this second room, visiting when they’re serving him dinner (or breakfast, time eludes him), a spread of varied, little portions to try to satisfy his normally picky appetite made worse by pain and misery.

“You’re awake,” Hux says, still annoyed for some inexplicable reason; Kylo can see his green eyes linger on the patchwork of bandages of Kylo’s torso, but when he pulls a chair to the bedside he only looks at Kylo’s face. The stern focus reminds Kylo of their planning meetings, like before they assign divisions and duties and resources.

“We didn’t recover your mask.”

“It fell in the oscillator.”

“Ah.” Hux pauses, then continues when it’s clear Kylo isn’t going to explain. “Neither did we recover your lightsaber.”

“Broken.”

“Broken?” Kylo nods, taking one piece of pink fruit from the tray and eating it slowly. Hux clears his throat. “Do you care to explain this?”

“Not to you.”

“Not to me? Ren, if left to me you would have died on that planet,” lie, “or you would been killed aboard your own ship,” lie, “or you will never leave the Finalizer. Leader Snoke wants you to be ready for training.”

“I can fight now as well as ever.”

“You have no weapon. You have multiple injuries. You’ve been awake for less than six hours and you have already destroyed one room. For the sake of yourself and my ship, stay here. Sleep, even; surely you must need to do that as well.” 

Kylo stares at him for a long moment, and Hux is certain the gash cutting across his face makes him colder, harder. Hux doesn’t look away, doesn’t yield. But Kylo does, turning his attention to the window, and Hux takes his chance. He moves from the seat to the bedside, pushes the tray arm out of the way, and sits next to Kylo, reaching out to grab his chin. 

His hand stops short of Kylo’s face, held still by that dark, prickling power and Kylo stares at him, eyes wide and suspicious. “Let me touch you,” Hux says softly, though he gives Kylo an unimpressed look: fear, truly? Now, of all times?

The power eases off of Hux’s hand, and he completes his action, lightly taking Kylo’s chin in his thumb and turning his head to better catch the new scar in the light. Kylo moves without resistance (too addicted to this touch already, he thinks, his weaker self is looking for comfort and here it is). The doctors have done wonders in such a short time, leaving a fresh, white-pink line where once he had been burned and bloodied. Hux’s thumb traces it slowly from just below Kylo’s eye, down his cheek, his throat, to where it disappears beneath the bandages for his other wound at his shoulder.

“Why did you let them target the oscillator?” Hux asks, his voice still quiet. His thumb moves over Kylo’s shoulder, pressing gently on the wound.

Kylo doesn’t react, holding still. “That wasn’t my task.”

“It was our weapon.” 

“It was your weapon. I needed to kill a man.”

“Just one? Did you do it?”

Kylo dips his head in a single nod, his gaze shifting down. “I did.”

“And then? Who did the rest of this to you?” Hux’s hand falls to Kylo’s thigh, and his finger follows the edge of the bandage there, where the quillon of his own saber had been burned across his thigh. 

Kylo hesitates, not because of the pain but because of lingering disbelief. He knows what it feels like when the Force courses through your veins and lends you all the power in the galaxy, as much as your own will can bear, but he’s never seen it turned against him, against his own prowess, while he felt so bereft of the same power. Hux would never understand, he might even think him that much weaker, so he shakes his head. “I’d like to rest,” Kylo says instead.

“Then rest.”

“Alone.”

Hux gives him a dark smile, patting his knee through the blanket at his waist. “I’ll leave when I’m ready.”

Kylo gives him a long look, and then he shifts, careful about the lingering pinch in his side from the blaster shot, to stretch out on the bed. When he’s prone, Hux’s hand moves up from his thigh to his neck, and Kylo sucks in a sharp breath out of instinct, tense before he slowly forces himself to relax, eyes closed against the white lights overhead.

All of it, the little reactions of surprise the coping, seems to amuse Hux: he chuckles, and then the soft leather of his gloved fingers are caressing the side of Kylo’s neck, lulling him to sleep. “We’re going to regroup with the fleet before we continue back to base,” Hux tells him, and Kylo feels Hux’s other hand smoothing his hair back. Kylo hates how good this feels, how it settles him and quells the anger and doubles his fatigue. “It will give you enough time to heal before we meet Snoke ourselves.” 

Kylo reflects that he should be eager to start the next phase in his training, but after seeing the Force flow through an opponent like he did--to present himself with no weapon--he feels a different doubt than before, the persistent nag of failure, but perhaps it is just his own recovery. Or the gentle touches--there is no motivating pain here. Hux knows this, Kylo’s certain. 

He needs to recover more than just his strength. “I need to go to Ilum.”

“Return to the Unknown Regions? Why?”

“I need a new crystal for another weapon.” Kylo takes a slow breath. “Perhaps two.” 

Hux sighs. “Very well. A five day detour, then?”

“Acceptable,” he breaths, and the minute the word leaves his lips, Hux is kissing him, hand tight on his throat again to hold him still while he scrambles to grab at Hux’s jacket. He forgets to breathe at some point, leaving him gasping when Hux pulls back and looks him in the eye.

“Don’t ever disgrace yourself like this again,” Hux says in a harsh whisper. “I never want to see you this weak, so you will heal, and train, until you can face the Supreme Leader as if nothing has changed you. Is that clear?”

The threat draws a weak smile. “How long do you think he will wait, General?”

“As long as he must.” Another kiss, shorter but just as sharp and rough. “Until I am satisfied.”


End file.
